Seven Years after 9/11: Arabs Still Blame the Jews

Academics and the “man on the street” in the Arab world still blame the Jews and Israel for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that devastated the US and punctured the American image of being impossible to penetrate. Arab media have widely claimed that Arabs are the biggest victims of the attacks.

A New York Times man-on-the-street survey revealed disbelief that Arab terrorists were behind the attacks, and many still outright accuse Israel and the United States of planning the aerial crashes that leveled the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City.

“Look, I dont believe what your governments and press say. It just cannot be true,” The Times quoted Ahmed Issab, a Syrian engineer who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. “I think the US organized this so that they had an excuse to invade Iraq for the oil.

Pakistani native Mohammed Jamil, writing in the Pakistan Observer, justified the terrorists’ motives, citing American-Israeli collusion. “There is a widespread perception that the US leadership used 9/11 events to implement its program of controlling the world resource,” he wrote.

“American president George W. Bush always turned a blind eye towards Israeli repression, state terrorism, and killings of thousands of Palestinians . On examining the initial statements of Osama bin Laden, one could infer that al-Qaeda had twin objectives vis-à-vis the liberation of Palestine and exit of US forces from Saudi Arabia.

“Even the date al-Qaeda terrorists chose for their attack showed their true motivation, as September 11 is the anniversary of the League of Nations proclaiming in Palestine the British Mandate in 1922. The date represents the first physical step toward the implementation of the Balfour Declaration and establishment of Israel. This fact was never revealed because the world media is under the control of Jews It was a calculated lie to divert the Americans from associating the disaster with the United States support for Israel.”

Jamil added that “any country that bombs another country creates millions of angry enemies against it.”

The Times’s street survey also showed that Arabs blame American foreign policy for the 9/11 attacks. “Maybe people who executed the operation were Arabs, but the brains? No way, Mohammed Ibrahim, a clothing-store owner Cairo, told the newspaper. “It was organized by other people, the United States or the Israelis.”

Many Arabs still spread the rumor that Jews did not go to work at the World Trade Center the morning of the attack, although there were indeed many Jews who died in the resulting blaze and collapse of the skyscraper.

Another Egyptian claimed that the real reason Americans have not captured al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is that he was not behind the attacks. “What happened in Iraq confirms that it has nothing to do with bin Laden or al-Qaeda. They went against Arabs and against Islam to serve Israel, thats why,” he claimed.

Dr. Ahmad Mustafa wrote in GulfNews.com that Arabs are the real victims of 9/11. He said the attacks have intensified a negative image of Muslims, which has reinforced violence.

Dr. Azzam Tamimi, director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought, stated, “9/11 has become the biggest blackmail in modern history after the Holocaust. Zionists continue to blackmail Europeans because of the Holocaust, while the Americans now blackmail the Arabs and the Muslims because of what happened on 11 September 2001.”